All too often in online businesses, we focus on figuring out ways for our audience to find us. We mess with keywords. We promote our stuff in the places we hang out. We write killer blog posts with optimized headlines, cool pictures, and catchy phrases.
Meanwhile, our would-be audience is going about their business, living their own lives, and are completely oblivious to the fact that we have Just What They Need (TM). From their perspective, we don’t exist.
If your stuff is selling like hot cakes or you’re booked solid, then you’re doing just fine. At that point, you don’t need additional business.
But if you’re not selling enough of your product or you’re not booked solid, perhaps it’s time to spend less time figuring out how to make it easier for them to find you and more time figuring out how you can find them.
That means you’ll have to figure out who they are.
That means you’ll have to figure out where they hang out.
That means you’ll have to figure out what they want and need.
That means you’ll have to figure out how to promote your stuff in a way that’s resonate with who you are and what you do.
Go and connect with them. Leave some value on the table.
How often will this work? If you ask that going into the process, you’re not connecting with people — you’re promoting your business.
Connect with individual people and you’ll build an audience. Then that audience will come to you. Since you never sold to them, they’ll buy from you.
That’s why I’m doing a direct mail campaign. I’m coming to them. Great post.
.-= Mary´s last blog ..May 8, Timing a Speech =-.
The tried and true posting on forums, etc is one way to accomplish this. I am always looking for new ways to FIND my readers and buyers though.
.-= Carla´s last blog ..Giveaway: Win SIX Clean+Green Eco-Friendly Pet Cleaning Products =-.
Figure out who they are, where they hang out, what they want and need. Really? Sure. HOW????!!!!!
I’d say this is the biggest challenge of building a business. I know my market – I know the exact people I want to help but finding enough of them is the hardest thing I’ve ever done in my life.
.-= Alex Fayle | Someday Syndrome´s last blog ..Stop Talking and Take Off the Rose-Colored Glass Already! Lab Rats Week 3 =-.
On http://www.FoolQuest.com all that I strive for without success, is even to open discourse upon the implementation of the most fundamental of intrinsic motivations, the highest values as agreed upon by cutting edge science and sages of old alike. But all that I’ve seemed accomplish is actually to discover new taboos from expression!
As for something more concrete, I have a confidential project for which I need to reach out to social workers in the Boston area. But nobody seems to know how. Yes, I’m researching the obvious: conventions and online forums.
I’ve even researched, quite without success, the techniques of HUMINT asset spotting and recruitment, as well as the methodologies of outcasts, deviants and predators, in the endeavors of covert outreach while underground.
I’ve even developed new business models for the application of advanced computerized Sociometry.
As for life without the rose colored glasses, well perhaps I have been at all successful in expression of my sheer contempt for the vast industries of travesty surrounding every major flavor of forced good cheer and lunatic faith, extolling instead, that core premise of science and democracy: falliblism, the positive power of negative thinking and every due diligence, even in the most grandest ambitions.
@Mary: That’s a great idea for another reason: how many people are going to them? Most of the market has bought onto the idea of electronic advertising, so they aren’t in your audience’s physical mailboxes. If you’re there, they hear your message. Great idea!
Quick suggestion/tip/question: Can you handwrite the addresses, or is your campaign really big? Imagine how much more likely you are to open a letter with a hand-written address.
@Carla: Yep, forums and commenting on other blogs is still a great way to find people and build an audience. It’s crowded, though, so that’s why it’s good to keep trying to find a new way to meet them. The less crowded the way is, the more time and attention you get.
@Aaron: Perhaps I wasn’t clear that I was playing with the obviousness of what you’d have to do to find them. But many people I’ve talked to in online business forget to go over those basics.
It’s hard to give concrete details in a general post, but since you provided more information below, I’ll answer the “how” component there.
@Alex: Tell me about it! It’s a challenge, but I’ve found working through the challenge to be far more rewarding, intrinsically and instrumentally, than “come to me” types of efforts.
@Aaron: Have you visited the not-for-profits and social agencies in your area? That’s where your social workers are. Find one that’s a connecter and you’re in there like swimwear.
You won’t get their sustained attention at conventions, unless your project is really clear and inspiring.
Social workers work with people directly, so online forums are a secondary location to hang out directly.
Go to fund-raisers, marathons, homeless shelters, boys clubs, and help and hangout.
And, I say this with only the best intentions: make your ideas more concrete, clear, and simple. I’m a trained philosopher and I have a hard time following you, so I imagine that many others find it challenging as well. Taking a complex and making it simple is not dumbing yourself or the idea down. I speak from experience here. (Think Russell, not Kant or Mill.)
Alex: “I’d say this is the biggest challenge of building a business. I know my market – I know the exact people I want to help but finding enough of them is the hardest thing I’ve ever done in my life.”
Co-sign 1,000%.
.-= Catherine Cantieri, Sorted´s last undefined ..If you register your site for free at =-.
I hope to interest social workers in something also extremely productive from their standpoint, as fate would have it, a real long egregious but potentially lucrative and constructive probortunity to be plucked that I have become aware of. Sadly, however, I tend not to reciprocate: For the most part, I am not very interested in what charities are already doing or else I would already have stepped forward. And no, I am certainly not seeking to volunteer to do their chores!
In political activism, particularly, I have long given up in frustration seeking any opportunity for real input to make a difference by doing anything not already covered and being done. Often, the most readily accessible grassroots groups are only consumed in ineffectual group validation exercises!
As pertaining to my own proposal, most agencies, workers and activists will tend to be disqualified by whatever their own narrow agendas they pursue and strive to impose. And often whatever little information these agencies have on one another turns out to be even complete misinformation. Such much for community! As ever, society can often seem like more of an obstacle to be bypassed or overcome, than a path to be followed, except where others want us all to go!
So, indeed, dot tell, please, how does one locate and identify an agency that is a connector, as you put it, Charlie, and actually good at facilitating connection? How can I approach this efficiently?
I suspect that what you don’t understand indeed I haven’t said because no one has asked me yet. I only mentioned them broadly and in passing as alas still as yet somewhat half baked outreach methodologies, as far as implementation that is. Not already covered on FoolQuest.com , as well as my conspiracy for social workers, is my question on espionage etc. put most simply: How do people underground deep under cover with no social context whatsoever, study, hunt out, locate, target, approach, connect and find one another, for whatever purpose and in dead secret? I am truly mystified! Certainly, such skill would be no small advantage. But I can find no information at all.
My biggest problem is time for all of this. Curiosity and conversation have never been an issue. Just getting on Twitter has added huge time sink…
Ah, Twitter, the epitome of short attention span!
i think you’ve made a great point here emphasizing on building relationships and connections actively rather than passively, i.e expecting them to come to you. i think this really applies to social networks. Instead of trying to sell to them, try being friends with people in your own niche, offer them help, advice and after some time they will listen and come to you.
Cheers!